Monday, end of a work week...

This is a different week, only one workday as we are off on our travels tomorrow, a vacation from the vacation, so we decided to empty the left side of the compost heap today, which was quite easy as it was ten easy wheelbarrows full, another yard of soil/humus for the new shrub bed near the hedge.

That is almost the end of the process for the compost heap cycle, the left side is excavated except for a couple of inches of humus as a starter layer, the right side has about eight inches of transition zone that will be incrementally shovelled to the other side each time we have a foot of fresh weeds, clippings and kitchen scraps, the starter layer, new materials and transition layers will then be the engine of the process all over again, all we have to do is feed it and wait a few years.

The new bed is ready, new soil for the influx of the shrubs and plants in September. The photo looks basically the same as the previous blog except there are ten more wheelbarrows dumped on the top, another cubic yard moved and no compost left, which means that the wheelbarrow has now been parked back in the shed for the season, no more mulch or soil to move this year.

Time for a short vacation! 

The new bed, morning shade, afternoon sun.

Today, five more wheelbarrows full of soil from "the other side" and a few rocks to define an extension to an existing path, a fork in the road that will be a project for another year. The new bed is destined to hold some of the shrubs and plants that we will buy in September during our yearly pilgrimage to Russell Nursery up near Sidney.

That represents 24 wheelbarrows full of soil, about two and a half cubic yards moved at the end of our "working week" of Monday to Friday half-hour sessions in the garden. The right hand side has been heavily weeded during the week by the good lady, yet there are still more weeds to be removed, to be relocated to the compost heap and I estimate five more wheelbarrows of soil will finish off the job, but that will all have to wait until Monday, because we now deserve our weekend.

The left hand side of the compost heap has amazing fully composted humus, rich in nutrients, after finishing off this bed I will need to remove the rest of it, probably to a temporary heap on a tarp and then onto another new bed which has not been imagined yet, if we define where it will be, then we will cut out the middleman (tarp) and move it right to the job site. I will post a photo of the left side of the compost heap completely empty before we start filling it up again with weeds and kitchen waste.

The sun is shining, life is good, make the most of it.

Compost heap, Step Two

Today I took the last of the soil from the right side, it was another five full barrows, bringing the total on the new garden bed so far to nineteen. Once I was satisfied that I was at ground level, I started dragging the upper loose material, using a rake, from the left side. It was hard work on a hot day, there was a lot to go in the empty space and from time to time I would compact the compost down by stomping on it and wet the right side down with a hose, to keep dust down, but also to help with the composting process.

Apparently it is good to urinate on a compost heap to add nitrogen and other goodness, I tend not to do that though, you know, neighbours and all that.

We now have the right side filled up, new material will go on top of that until I have excavated the left side down to the ground level, then any new stuff will go to the bottom of that side. In the process of digging the left side, some of the upper material will be retained and moved to the top of the right side on a temporary basis, this is because that material is partially decomposed, not quite ready as soil for our beds, so I will drag it back into the left side at the end.

If you want a technical explanation, a three-stage composting system is essentially a biological conveyor belt driven by time and microbes. At the top layer, fresh organic inputs like kitchen scraps, weeds and yard clippings are introduced; this raw material is highly energetic, recognizable, and rapidly consumed by initial bacteria. As these materials break down and sink, they enter the middle layer—often called active or semi-mature compost—where the intense heat of initial decomposition has subsided, leaving behind a fibrous, dark transition zone where fungi and actinomycetes slowly break down tougher fibers. Finally, at the very bottom layer, the process reaches completion, resulting in finished humus: a rich, stable, and dark, crumbly soil-like material that is completely unrecognizable from its original forms and fully ready to nourish the garden.

In the late 1960s, my grandfather, John Edward Edwards, or Jack to those that knew him, understood all of that, no need for google or AI, he knew stuff without the internet, how could that be possible?

It also helps to have worms and other insects in the compost heap, worms consume and pass the composted material through themselves as they bore through it, they tend to live at the lower levels of the heap, creating tunnels and aerating the pile, every time I walked away from the heap with those nineteen wheel barrows of soil, our local robins would swoop in to snatch a worm or two, which is why when we are digging in other areas of the garden, if we find a worm, it is abducted by "aliens" and moved through time and space to the new planet called the compost heap. 

The yearly cycle. Compost heap.

It is more like every two years that the compost heap gets really full and in the last couple of days we have been moving some of the excellent soil out of the bottom layer of the heap, it is being moved to the front yard where we are creating a new shrub bed for the planting phase in September.

The process is hard labour, basically moving material about, the exposed lower level, on the right, has very good soil and it is being transported to the new bed, when I hit solid ground and empty all the corners, the newish upper layers of the left hand side will be moved over to the right hand side, exposing the great soil underneath. In just two days, during our half-hour sessions, I have moved fourteen very full barrows of good soil from the right which I estimate to be one and a half cubic yards, that would be about twenty-four 50L bags.

The cost is zero, besides physical labour, and we have had many lots of good soil out of this compost heap since we built it back in March 2017. 

As they say Aardvark never killed anyone.

In the days to come I will continue the cycle, it means that the upper material on the left is moved to the lower of the excavated side, then if needed, I will remove the good soil from the bottom of the left hand side and we will start adding new compostable plants and peelings to that side first then both sides, in about two years time, we will have more good soil to use, the only problem being is, where will we use it?

Photos of the newly constructed bed will follow in the next week I expect.